Insights from the Deep
March 13, 2024
Climate Change and World Heritage
March 13, 2024

The Ocean's
Cultural legacy

North Frisian Islands, Germany-Danemark

A UNESCO World Heritage site, the Wadden Sea is the largest unbroken system of intertidal sand and mud flats in the world. The site covers the Dutch Wadden Sea Conservation Area, the German Wadden Sea National Parks of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, and most of the Danish Wadden Sea maritime conservation area. In the top-left of the image, a large algal bloom is visible in emerald-green. Harmful algal blooms caused by excessive growth of marine algae have occurred in the North Sea in recent years, with satellite data being used to track their growth and spread. These data can then be used to help develop alert systems to mitigate the damage to the tourism and fishing industries.

© Sentinel-2, Copernicus, ESA

HERITAGE

Marine heritage sites are places of outstanding universal value for humanity, such as coral reefs, underwater caves, shipwrecks, and archaeological sites. Satellites help locate, document, and protect these sites from threats.

The Republic of Kiribati is an independent island nation consisting of some 33 atolls near the equator in the central Pacific. The islands are spread over approximately 3.5 million sq km of ocean, but with a total land area of only 800 sq km. Kiribati is one of the lowest-lying nations in the world, with many of the country’s atolls and coral islands rising no higher than 2 m above sea level – making them extremely vulnerable to sea level rise.

© Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2020), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Fanny Douvere

Senior project officer

UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Marine programme
Paris, France

“We use satellite data to detect how the Ocean is changing on an almost continuous basis. This scientific information is invaluable for tracking what is happening in the ocean and where it is happening. It helps local authorities, for example, to control fishing activities, especially in large and remote sites such as Kiribati.”
Other Stories